May 12, 2014

13 Ways to Recognize Your Employees; Budget Approval Not Required

Here are thirteen ways to recognize your employees without needing budget approval, a budget meeting, a spreadsheet or powerpoint presentation.

1. Put It On Your Calendar.

My calendar shows my priorities. I start every day writing my gratitude list. Quick, fast. Streaming consciousness of bullet points. I may offer a sentence to expand on a point. But it puts the right lens on my day: appreciation, recognition.

Put It On Your Calendar.

Schedule it every day, not every five years. Write down the names of employees you want to recognize and why. Then go recognize them.

That makes it a habit to put on the right lens at the start of your day. It also keep that lens clean and clear and those recognition muscles toned and flexible.

Spend two more minutes with each person than you normally do and ask two more questions.

3. Listen.

What? Yeah, I said Listen. L.I.S.T.E.N. Listen. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason. But in this up is down and down is up world (I’m guilty, too.) we have reversed that ratio.

Recognize when your employees are talking to you by closing your shiny digital toys, laptops, workstations, video games. Close any books or reports or manuals you are reading. And do what? Listen. Make eye contact. Take notes. Ask questions. Repeat what they say for clarification.

4. Connect Their Dots.

Connect their small wins to the small wins of the others. Show how they each make the other’s possible. Show how they bring everyone closer to the goal and the metric you’re using to measure your progress.

Brag on ‘em. You’re challenging your listeners to do the same, you know. A good way to leverage this step is to recognize that person in their presence. Sure, you can cc them.

Want to leverage its impact further? Recognize them on social media. Why not? Your employees are your brand. They are the ones your customers connect with. No one connects with a website or slogan. Recognize your winners to those whose trust they've won: your customers.

6. Share Your Failures.

Show them it is okay to fail as you long as you take responsibility for the mistake including correcting it and you’re willing to learn from that mistake. Okay, and you need to show them it is okay if there is some good-natured chuckles, teasing, too. Those that tease today will be those teased tomorrow.

7. Forgive Their Mistakes. Learn from Them.

See Point #6.

8. Create a Snitch Program.

We’re social creatures; we’re going to talk, share stories, where we gather whether it’s the cave and the firepit, water-cooler, the parking lot, the gym, the PTA meeting or on social media. It’s how we build community.

Gossiping, snitching, are forms of those story-telling behaviors, albeit misdirected and ill-informed. You can redirect them with better content and reinforce the better-informed snippets with recognition and repitition.

Create a company snitch program. Transform the habit of snitching into the habit of quiet recognition. Think of all the small wins that occur within your team or company that go unrecognized by you but recognized by others. Ask them to share them with you so you can recognize those winners at your next meeting. Assure them if they need to be, that you will keep their name anonymous.

Then at the end of the meeting share the story. Someone told me ... Then ask if anyone else wants to share a story. They might not the first time. I shared a few and the meeting ended on a strong positive note.

Repeat the process for the next meeting. Ask people to share with you those little wins; you’ll keep their name anonymous if they wish. At the second meeting a few other members stepped forward and shared a snitch. The meeting ended on an even stronger strong positive note.

By the third meeting where the final agenda item was ‘snitches’ everyone participated. We went around the room two times, each person’s story inspiring another one and another one. The meeting ended on a powerful note of recognition by everyone, for everyone.

Answer customer calls. Handle sales prospects. When the phones start ringing jump in and help handle those calls. Cover the phones while they have their meetings or when the volume of calls rise unexpectedly. Step in at lunch and field those queries.

By pitching in and helping, it recognizes their demanding workload in a way that is meaningful to them. You also communicate how important this work, their work, is to the company’s success.

As CEO I insisted that all unanswered customer service calls and sales calls roll to my office phone. They each backed the other up. Unanswered sales calls rolled to customer service and vice versa. Then if no one answered, they rolled to my desk where I answered them.

Everyone knew this. By rolling unanswered calls to my desk it showed how important these calls were and how important it was that I help everyone handle these calls.

Handling them also helped me better recognize their needs for resources. The only way for me to experience our products and services and customers and websites and pricing and procedures ... ‘their world’ ... was to step into their roles.

10. Let Them Teach You.

I came up through the ranks, starting in a frontline customer service rep position. On the frontline we knew the most about our services and products and procedures and customers than anyone.

That is true in every company. Well, it is true in every company that allows its members to think and question and participate in delivering the service in a role more comprehensive than that of a cog.

Let them teach you. You trust them with your prospects and customers every minute,hour and day. Let them teach you what is working and what is not. See above, that listening point.

That includes recognizing their input with any decision for vendor, supplier, partner, new employee.

11. Show Them The Door.

That’s right. Show them the door. It’s similar to kicking a baby bird out of the nest. You recognize them as adults when you expect them to handle issues as an adult, organizing the issue, the data and offering two or three solutions of their own for discussion with you.

Sure, you want to be there to help. But you’re not helping by offering yourself as a convenient crutch.

If I was PhD student I would study the arc and timeline of a company’s growth versus when company policy required monthly birthday celebrations. An extensive study would show that a company’s growth began to stall when birthdays could not be celebrated on birth dates.

Most of the additional ones included in the book cost nothing more than your time and your own scraped knees, diplomas for your learning experiences. Reading the book and following in my footsteps will help you avoid some of them. But more importantly I hope it inspires you to craft your own.

Taking these steps helped drive revenue growth and positive cash-flows in the commodity-hell industries of long-distance calling and conference calling. Yet as a small company headquartered in a rural company selling the least sexy product in the world, paper clips are sexier than conference calls, we competed against much larger companies doing the same ... and won. This was how we won. I cannot guarantee your success. But the logic says if we can do it in that industry, I am sure you can do in your own industry. $3.99, the cost of my book, becomes a great deal for you, your team, your company and your career.

Books I've Read and Recommend

Jackie Huba: Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanaticsa bigger challenge than I predicted. It’s not what to say that challenged me. It’s what NOT to say. I start reading and within 3-4 paragraphs, I’m nodding my head and saying Yes, yes, exactly. Bam. Bam, baby. Yeah, come on. Can I get a witness. Then I want to share verbatim Jackie’s translation of Gaga’s strategy. Here’s why. It’s a strategy with 7 steps that any, ANY, business can execute under its own terms and under its own budget no matter how small or large. Granted, I enjoy reading this strategy as it’s applied to Gaga. And Jackie's a good writer. But, what's really inspiring is understanding how even a car wash could apply this strategy with these 7 steps and find success. You could build a global empire selling gardening mulch if you followed these 7 steps. And you could lower your advertising and marketing budgets, to boot.

Kevin Allen: The Case of the Missing Cutlery: A Leadership Course for the Rising StarYes! Finally a leadership book and author who bring empathy, caring and listening to the front of the leadership room instead of insisting it sit in the back, laughed at or ignored with no champion and certainly no budget to help spotlight its role in creating engaged leaders.
He had me as a reader and fan on the first page of his introduction. Here’s what he wrote:
Years later, when I was made Executive Vice President at McCann Erickson Worldwide ... I came to realize that the gift of human empathy, which had guided me through those early days at Marriott, would allow me to steer literally thousands of people to row in the direction of McCann Erickson’s future.
I’ve learned things the hard way, through trial and error, mostly error. Through it all, I came to realize people follow you because of who you are; because you have come to understand the deep desires and hopes of your people; and because, by connecting with them, you have created a culture and a common cause they believe in.

Chuck Blakeman: Why Employees Are Always a Bad IdeaI love this book. It's true that I say this about every book I review here. And why shouldn't I? Why waste time reviewing a book I don't love.
That being said...Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea: (and other business diseases of the industrial age) is one of my favorite business books for a long time.
It starts with the title. It's eye-catching, provocative, right? Mentally, it's a head-slap, positing a theorem inside your head then pounding it home with AlwayandBad to let you know you're not getting away; you're going to have your mind changed. Right now.
As I kept looking at the title, tilting my head like a dog - one side to the other - I began to smile. I read a kindred spirit. Here's a rebel, a true disruptor, someone who's willing speak up, take a stand; I like that. I might not agree with what I'm about to read, but his title made me smile without being cloying or clever so I knew I was in for a good ride.

Stephen Lynch: Business Execution for RESULTS: A practical guide for leaders of small to mid-sized firmsI'm an avid reader, always have been. I've read a lot of business books and I’ve led a small business. I recommend you read Business Execution for Results: A Practical Guide for Leaders of Small to Mid-Sized Firms. It is a very, very good book, among the best, most usable business books I’ve read.
As a writer, he does things that make the reading very pleasant, very inspiring, very engaging. Very good.
He offers personal stories, anecdotes, little clips. They’re genuine, sincere, well-organized to capture your attention, engage you in the story that illustrates the next lesson. I found myself thinking...I can relate...I am relating....I see, feel, remember this personally. And Stephen’s writing is very crisp, very concise in taking you from these stories to the principle with each chapter...and as important to the steps you’re going to take to generate the results you want to see. No hitch in the reading flow. VERY nice.